It all happened on September 25, 2006 while Yvonne Harpuder from Los
Angeles, California was with her husband on a trip to Berlin and Vienna.
While in Berlin, she was promised by her husband a side-trip to
Oranienburg, 35 km north of Berlin, to find the house her grandparents
were living in and had their store before the start of the Nazi pogroms
and the infamous Kristallnacht. She had no clue how to find the building
except for a very small black and white photograph that showed the
exterior of the store. The photo was embossed on a little red address
book she got from her aunt after her uncle passed away (Figure one). The
store according to her mother sold men’s clothing and hat gear, and was
situated in an impressive and stately corner building adjacent to a
palace (Figure two), and a few steps from the Havel River (Figure
three).

Upon arrival at the train station in Oranienburg (Figure four), she
showed an elderly lady shopping nearby the picture on the address book.
The woman immediately recognized the area and thereafter gave Yvonne
directions to the building.

After a ten-minute walk, she excitedly approached the yellow,
multi-story edifice, at Bernauer Strasse 2, that looked identical to the
photograph on the address book (Figure five).

After taking a few snapshots of the building and the front of the store,
which is now a bicycle shop (Figure six), Yvonne walked inside and
introduced herself to the friendly storekeeper. When she told him that
this was her grandparent’s store, he asked the 62-year-old American to
step outside the shop with him for a moment where he then pointed at two
small brass plates embedded in the cobblestones on the sidewalk.

Tears began to flow down her cheeks when she read the names of her
grandparents, Isidor and Hedwig Abrahm, inscribed on the plates called
“Stolpersteine” (Figure seven and Figure eight). Stolpersteine are
cobblestones covered with a layer of brass and an inscription
commemorating a person who used to live in the house behind the stone
and had been persecuted or killed by the National Socialists.

“I was overwhelmed”, she told the Oranienburger
Press at the Berlin Intercontinental Hotel during an extensive interview
the next day. (Figure nine). Several other local newspapers and the
Internet followed the story and also began to publish her emotional
experience at Bernauer Strasse (Figure ten). She has never heard about
Stolpersteine,
nor has been to Oranienburg. All she wanted at the time was to find the
store of her grandparents, the rest was serendipity. It may be recalled
that Sachsenhausen was a short distance from the mainstream of
Oranienburg
where in 1936 the Nazis established their first notorious concentration
camp.

Yvonne was told very little by her mother, Ilse about life in
Oranienburg during the Nazi period. Instead she spoke about the more
carefree and happy days during her early youth while living in that
city. One of the highlights she often mentioned was when as an athletic
teenager she jumped off from a bridge into the Havel River already
mentioned above. A cramp in her leg almost caused her to drown when
luckily a fisherman pulled her out from the water. Yvonne remembered her
mother’s story well while standing at that same bridge during her visit
to Oranienburg (Figure11). She also remembered the palace that her
mother spoke about when she was alive (Please refer back to Figure
three). Both the bridge and the palace were untouched during all those
years.

Looking back in years, it was 1938 when it was time to leave Germany
because of the Nazi dreadful policies against Jews. Yvonne’s
grandmother, Hedwig managed to leave with her children in 1938 to
Amsterdam. A form had to be completed and submitted to the Nazi
authorities before they left, stating the move from Germany to
Amsterdam, and their religious affiliation which was crassly indicated,
“Jude”. It was then cancelled with the Swastika and Nazi eagle (Figure
12).

Later that year Hedwig failed to secure a visa to America and therefore,
had to remain in Amsterdam while her children (Yvonne’s parents)
continued with their emigration to America. Yvonne’s grandfather, Isidor
immigrated with his son to Shanghai. The son’s address in Shanghai along
with Hedwig’s address in Amsterdam is shown on the same page in the
little red address book mentioned above (Figure 13).

Yvonne’s grandmother, Hedwig died in Amsterdam at an unknown date.
Isidor, Yvonne’s grandfather, survived the war but died shortly after in
February 1946 while he was still in Shanghai (Figure 14).

How did Oranienburg get its Stolperstein? The best way to answer this
question is to quote part of a letter written in German that yours truly
received from a high school teacher in Oranienburg by the name of Silke
Schroeder (Figure 15):

“When I had the opportunity to address the parent-teacher
association at the Rungegymnasium in Oranienburg where I am a teacher
and my son a student, I made a suggestion to raise money for a
Stolperstein in our city by having a bake sale. The parents and students
agreed, hence the children and mothers began to bake thirty delicious
cakes that were sold to everyone in the school. When I came to the
school in the afternoon, all the students were very enthusiastically
involved with the project. A few gathered the crumbs from the cake while
the other students counted the money from the bake sale. It was
something for everyone to see. Yes, we have reached our goal and thus we
had enough money for a Stolperstein.

On May 10, 2006 Guenter Demnig laid the brass plated cobblestone into
the pavement at Bernauer Strasse (in front of Yvonne’s former
grand-parents store). All the students including the school principal
took part in the ceremony. Now, the name Hedwig and Isidor Abraham will
be remembered by the students that participated in this meaningful
undertaking.”

Mrs. Schroeder added in her letter:

“For our youth that are now between thirteen and fourteen years old, it
was very important for them to become involved in this heartwarming and
inspiring project.”

If the name Guenter Demnig* does not mean anything today, it will in
the future. An artist with a social conscience and big heart, he will be
known for having created a unique way to commemorate people that became
victim of National Socialism (Nazism). “A person is only forgotten when
his name is forgotten” declared Demnig, a Berlin born 58 year old
non-Jew.

As a result of his strong desire to honor and memorialize every human
life lost in the Holocaust, he embedded by the end of 2005 four-thousand
Stolpersteine in pavement in almost all the cities of Germany with the
beginning phrase, “Here Lived”; 1,450 in Cologne, 800 in Berlin, 960 in
Hamburg, and the rest in other German cities and with more to come.**

* To learn more about Guenter Demnig or to make a
charitable contribution, go to his Website:
www.stolpersteine.com